Horatio Wright

Horatio Gouverneur Wright (6 March 1820-2 July 1899) was a Major-General of the US Army during the American Civil War who was also known for assisting with the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City and the Washington Monument in Washington DC.

Biography
Horatio G. Wright was born in Clinton, Connecticut in 1820, and he graduated from West Point second in a class of 52 students in 1841. He was sent to Florida in 1846 as a US Army engineer, building Fort Jefferson and the Key West fortifications. When the American Civil War broke out in 1861, he destroyed the Norfolk Navy Yard, and he served in Thomas W. Sherman's November 1861 Port Royal, South Carolina expedition. He also led Union expeditions to the Florida coast from February to June 1862, attacking Jacksonville, St. Augustine, and other cities, and he was promoted to Major-General. In March 1863, he took command of the Army of the Ohio, and he commanded the District of Western Kentucky until May 1863, when he took command of a division of the VI Corps in the Army of the Potomac. After John Sedgwick's death athe Battle of Spotsylvania Court House on 9 May 1864, he took command of his corps, and he invited President Abraham Lincoln to join him on the Fort Stevens parapets while defending the fort from Jubal Early's Shenandoah Valley campaign. His corps was the first to breach Petersburg in 1865, and he captured Richard S. Ewell at Sailor's Creek. From July 1865 to August 1866, he commanded the Army of Texas, and he helped with building the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City and the Washington Monument in Washington DC after the war's end. Wright died in DC in 1899 at the age of 79.